Comments for BPD Transformation https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com
How I Understood and Recovered from Borderline Personality DisorderThu, 29 Aug 2019 07:55:50 +0000
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Comment on #20 – Splitting Explained and Thoughts on DBT by Here’s How to Deal with People Who Are Ghosting You – Ryce https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/20-splitting-explained-and-thoughts-on-dbt/comment-page-1/#comment-1682
Thu, 29 Aug 2019 07:55:50 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=565#comment-1682[…] and you really won’t know them for at least a few months. Withhold judgement and try and resist splitting (when we see someone as either evil or perfect) or forming too many opinions. That being said, if […]

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Comment on #26 – Why BPD Should Be Abolished, and What Should Replace It by Megan Hoffman https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/26-why-bpd-should-be-abolished-and-what-should-replace-it/comment-page-1/#comment-1645
Sat, 20 Jul 2019 02:02:45 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=716#comment-1645To anyone who wishes to abolish BPD as a diagnosis, I would simply ask if you’ve ever actually been Personally Involved with someone who has BPD. I am the daughter of a mother with undiagnosed BPD, and let me share with you a bit about the toll it has taken on my family. I cannot possibly share everything, because the damage has been so deeply ingrained, but I will try.

Whenever someone asks me what it was like to grow up, I simply don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to start. I guess I’ll start here: I find myself deeply saddened, grieving the loss of the childhood I Should have had. I find myself angry and confused, suffering from pervasive PTSD and anxiety symptoms due to chronic childhood emotional and physical abuse. And I am Deeply, Deeply angry at the therapist my mother saw for nearly 15 years–the one who diagnosed her with PTSD, anxiety, and chronic depression, instead of addressing the real situation. Perhaps the therapist was a moron and couldn’t see the signs (my mother has high-functioning BPD, so perhaps she was simply able to hide it from even her therapist like she hid it from the rest of the outside world). Perhaps the therapist simply didn’t want to “add to the feelings of worthlessness” my mother had by placing such a “debilitating” diagnosis on her head. I’ll never know for sure–but here is what I do know. I’ve already stated that I have frequent symptoms of PTSD and anxiety, and I’ve even gone through bouts of depression (due to situational circumstances AT HOME), but I have NEVER. NEVER. acted in ways my mother has consistently acted throughout her life.

BPD is a severe diagnosis. One that yes, may resemble other things, but is clear and distinct in itself. And because my mother was misdiagnosed (or I should say properly diagnosed but the therapist casually left out the largest issue brewing in the pot of mental struggles), she has INSISTED throughout her entire life that she ONLY has PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression, and NOTHING ELSE. And since that has been officially backed up by a license therapist, everyone in my mother’s life simply believed that claim. That claim was used by EVERYONE–including myself– to excuse my mother’s inexcusable behavior. I truly believe that had my mother received the correct diagnosis, much of what I’m about to write below could have been avoided and properly addressed.

Here is why BPD needs to be properly addressed and called out for what it is. This disorder has ripped apart my family entirely–making all our lives, my mother’s life most of all, Utter Hell. For those in her inner circle, she has a particular talent for making other people think and feel like they’re going insane. My mother would go into violent rages frequently. The loving, adoring memories I had of her when I was a small child were replaced by constant fear of what she would do next, oftentimes at the drop of a penny. She would literally be punching me in the face–and she wore some thick rings–over and over again. And if I did ANYTHING to defend myself–If I put my hands up to protect my face, if I pushed her away from me, she would either A. Become angrier, scream louder so that spittle would splash across my face, and say “HOW DARE YOU HIT ME YOU LITTLE *insert whatever verbal abuse you’d like*, OR B. fall down dramatically and burst into tears, begging my older sister to help her up, help her to walk, while bawling that I had physically hurt her–effectively making my older sister and anyone nearby believe I was the aggressor. And even if my older sister had seen exactly what happened, her reality was so deluded that she entirely believed my mother. All our realities were so deluded, that I literally questioned my own sanity. Option B was the worse of the two possible reactions, because it instantly turned my anger and–yes– hatred towards my abusive mother into guilt and sympathy towards my aggressor–into blaming myself.

This was my mother at her worst–she was physically violent for a span of about 4 years, until I finally ran away and placed myself into foster care. But she has always, always been chronically emotionally abusive. Every single person who has stepped into her inner circle at one time or another would experience it–the emotional manipulation. The gaslighting. The EXTREME verbal abuse. I can recount one experience in particular where I had gotten into an argument with my mother earlier in the day. That night, I walked into the room–terrified–to let her know that I was about to hop in the bath. (Because her control issues are SEVERE, she had say over even our most basic bodily functions. Sometimes we had to literally get permission to use the restroom). As soon as I let her know, she looked me in the face and said, “Good, I hope you drown in the bathtub.” I was 13 years old. I have recounted this experience multiple times to her, and every single time she says, “That’s crazy. You’re crazy. How could I ever say something like that?”

The worst part of all this was the main way she had us all convinced we were crazy–by appearing completely or mostly normal to “outsiders.” She would complain and complain endlessly about her horrible children to her friends, to anyone that would listen. She’d literally get her friends to chastise us over the phone on our “bad, uncontrollable” behavior. We were simply bad kids. The night I ran away from home, there was an incident where I was balled up on the living room floor while my mother was kicking me repeatedly as hard as she could. Both of my sisters were sitting at the dinner table less than ten feet away, witnessing the whole thing. When I later recounted this incident to social workers, my older sister got on the phone with me at my mother’s command and called me crazy–said it had never happened. My mother even had all the social workers convinced–whenever I’d recount something to them, they’d say something along the lines of, “What?! That happened?? Your mother doesn’t seem like that at all..she loves you so much…” and they’d try to convince me to return home. And this is the scariest part of high-functioning BPD. No one on the outside can see it, and people on the inside are living in some sort of warped reality based on what the BPD person thinks is real…so you truly believe something is fundamentally wrong with you, and that if you could just be better, could love more, then things would improve.
To this day, my mother will not admit to any abuse occurring in our household–especially not to physical abuse. She simply cannot face the things she has done–she lives in a separate reality. Every single one of her personal relationships is marked by extreme conflict. My sisters still live in warped realities–they have not escaped, and for the most part still accept all of my mother’s behaviors as being their own fault. No one–including my mother’s entire birth family–can manage to stay in her life for very long, and it has caused her to be mostly alone for as long as she’s been alive. Even my sisters and I only speak to her out of familial obligation, love for our mother, and extreme guilt (minus me, I don’t feel guilty one bit because I have come to recognize my mother for what she is–deeply sick). Intimacy is what she craves most–love is what she craves most–and she cannot see how she destroys any chance of having it. THIS IS WHY BPD NEEDS TO BE PROPERLY ADDRESSED AND TREATED. Had that therapist even once told her, “hey, I think there is something deeper happening here.” My family would have been more prepared to deal with the disorder that for so long has left us confused and alone, thinking we were all at fault. And perhaps my mother today, would have been able to overcome this Very Treatable issue and would be living a happier life. BPD IS DANGEROUS to not only the sick individual, but to every single person around them. Children, who are the most dependent, are ESPECIALLY VULNERABLE.

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Comment on #27 – The Kleinian Approach to Understanding and Healing Borderline Mental States by Rob Frazer https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/27-the-kleinian-approach-to-understanding-and-healing-borderline-mental-states/comment-page-1/#comment-1612
Sat, 15 Jun 2019 01:04:34 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=722#comment-1612Really important more people know the truth about BPD (or whatever it’s called now). Well done on writing such an illuminating and well thought out piece.

I am a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and worked with a client with BPD for over two years. It was the most incredible experience of my life. Difficult at times – really difficult – but so rewarding to see someone grow and move on with their life and not live in a nightmare of distortions and self-defeating defences.

I saw this person three times a week and often spent half the day with them, cooking a meal, going for a walk, reading children’s stories etc. Reparenting was crucial to recovery. I had to be her parents and show her it was safe to trust and love people.

So I hope as many people as possible read this page and learn that BPD is a tragedy but a surmountable one. All the best 🙂

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Comment on #9 – The Fairbairnian Object-Relations Approach to BPD by Eliza https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/the-fairbairnian-object-relations-approach-to-bpd/comment-page-1/#comment-1583
Sun, 07 Apr 2019 13:04:51 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=98#comment-1583Thanks for sharing this – and writing it all up. Do you have any shorter posts? (I find it really hard to focus for long times at the moment and split reading this post into three)

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Comment on #10 – Four Phases of BPD Treatment and Recovery by lisa https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/four-phases-of-bpd-treatment-and-recovery/comment-page-1/#comment-1540
Mon, 14 Jan 2019 19:29:59 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=474#comment-1540Thank you so much. I find these stages are like water and can run into each other and honestly what makes therapy hard is when the therapist “resists” that a person is not “out of contact” today but has been in the past few weeks.

In short, it is hard for a therapist to see the stages and this is what creates the problem not the client who is struggling to stay afloat in the only way they know.

My question is this: Can a person be fully functional outside of therapy but only exhibit these feelings in therapy environment?

I am finding that I have issues like BPD even though I was never diagnosed. I am diagnosed with PTSD. However, I have had all these stages in my therapy and still do the last two for sure and yet I find I am highly functional and even get a great marriage where positive, playfulness, and serious and maturity all have place. I work and in school and I keep friendships for a long time BUT I do have big challenges in family. In my family, I minimize contact but I do truly see their good and bad and try to stay judging or reacting. I am no contact with my mother cause she is still intrusive and emotionally abusive with her mouth and I am no longer believing one needs ambivalence in all relationships.

My point was still that the confusion of the therapist is the barrier for recovery. If therapist could apologize when they mix the stages and stop acting so fearful all the time, it would have been easier to recover.

if therapist knows OK this person is not truly “hating” me but transferring this to me regardless of how that is manifested, bpd would have been one of the easiest thing to treat. But therapists take things personal and try to outsmart the client.

My advise to therapists who deal with bpd: just let your ego take a vacation. Honestly they are not out to get you.

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Comment on #7 – Addiction Recovery , 12-Step Groups and BPD by Raymond Norris https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/addiction-recovery-12-step-groups-and-bpd/comment-page-1/#comment-1516
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 17:17:16 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=151#comment-1516Dear Mr. Dantes, there is certainly much that all of us simply do not know; the great mystery of the universe and how the unseen spirit world works. What works for one may not work for another. Personally, through long experience, both in addiction when younger, and, in 37 years of recovery both from bpd and alcohol & drug addiction, I can attest to the very powerful spiritual experiences I’ve had over the years, both in 12 Step programs and, later in the Christian environment. I have NO doubt of the incredible powers of both who we refer to as “God”, and also the magnetic vice of a lower power some would refer to as Evil, but in my experience is very real and can function in our realm also. Perhaps those who still cling to their own resources of one flavor or another haven’t yet been enough in the vice grip of the lower power; a power that seems determined to blind, bind, and ultimate destroy as many of God’s created beings as possible. I’m encouraged that you’ve decided to keep an open mind: that’s usually all it takes to survive on this side. Be blessed

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Comment on #2 – How Did I Recover from Borderline Personality Disorder? by Andrew https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/how-did-i-recover-from-borderline-personality-disorder/comment-page-1/#comment-1473
Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:26:30 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=5#comment-1473Hi.Your storey really interested me and I have a serious amount of respect for what you have done.
I have been through hell over the last 8 months with a girl I fell deeply in love with. I stumbled across bpd/bpd and obsessed over the forums and couldn’t believe what I was readkng.
Anyway I was hoping you could answer a question as you have been diagnosed and are obviously educated more than most on the topic ad you have been diagnosed and recovered.
What traits would someone with bpd have according to the DMM maturational model?
Thanks I’m advance.
Andrew

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Comment on About by nvhcgjdazyd@gmail.com https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/about/comment-page-1/#comment-1469
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Comment on #21 – My Nightmare of Psychiatric Hospitalization by Molly https://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/21-the-nightmare-of-psychiatric-hospitalization-in-america/comment-page-1/#comment-1432
Sun, 16 Sep 2018 14:20:34 +0000http://bpdtransformation.wordpress.com/?p=570#comment-1432Thanks for the insight. I’m a mental health Nurse. To hear from your side is deeply moving. I want to be more than just a Nurse.
I really want to help people rather than just medicate and observe. I spend more time with patients than staff. They are far more interesting to hang out with. Your experience sounded awful. So sorry. Yep psychiatry has a lot to improve. Always improvements in our system, but it’s still mostly meds…